Flashout - by Alexis Soloski (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Exhilarating."--The New York Times

One of the LA Times' Must Read Books for Summer

A thrill-seeking young woman joins a radical theater troupe in this taut, suspenseful novel of art, seduction, and the deadly limits of liberation.

New York, 1972. A cloistered college student slips out of the dorms to attend a performance by a legendary experimental performance troupe. Within months, she has left campus life behind and joined the company, infatuated by its charismatic leader and his promises of absolute freedom.

California, 1997. A theater teacher at an exclusive private school receives an unsettling letter. With her job at risk and her past clawing at her carefully constructed present, what will she do to protect the life she has made?

Riveting and atmospheric, Flashout is a coruscating coming-of-age story and an immersive thriller exploring the enchantments and perils of art.

Review Quotes

One of the LA Times' Must Read Books for Summer

Included in New York Theater's 'New Theater Books for Summer Reading'

"A stylish exercise in suspense, Flashout plumbs the larger argument that performance can be liberation or snare, sometimes in the same half-beat. With a spotlight-sharp gaze, Soloski tracks how the hunger for audience attention can seduce someone into rewriting their moral script. Even after the final curtain falls, the questions the novel raises -- about power, persona, complicity -- linger like stage smoke." --Catherine Chidgey, The New York Times

"The story of Theater Negative--from the strange, cultlike nature of its members to its peculiar performances--is at once completely original and heartbreakingly familiar. The dramatic irony of watching young Allison head into danger from a distance of 20 years later is a gut punch. The pacing hits just right as both revelations--what happened "that night" and the identity of the emailer--wash over the reader.
An intriguing mystery of youth, folly, and theater." --Kirkus

"Thrilling and seductive, Flashout is a suspenseful, beguiling read. In her sophomore novel, Alexis Soloski... taps into the dark side of making art and living without boundaries..... Soloski's prose is lush, hypnotic, and full of shards.... [It's] a dark, provocative psychological thriller that explores the personal cost of making art and the danger of living without boundaries." --Shelf Awareness (starred review)

"A heady, atmospheric thriller that underscores the dark side of art-making...Soloski's darkly seductive prose wrings harsh beauty from the characters' pain. The results are grimly satisfying." --Publishers Weekly

"Soloski's sophomore novel combines the crackling suspense of the best thrillers with scrappy theater-kid energy, leaving the reader blinded by the light of what a performance can truly be--and the destruction that can follow."--BookPage Starred Review

"Soloski's second novel is a dark academia thriller with an off-Broadway twist.... Soloski, a culture reporter for the New York Times (whose 2023 debut, Here in the Dark, is being adapted for TV), is gifted at revealing the subtle emotions that emerge when actors are on the stage or in the studio, while sustaining a sardonic, noir-like style." --Mark Athitakis, the LA Times

"Soloski delivers a taut, hypnotic novel that pirouettes between performance and peril.... [She] exposes the knife-edge between artistic freedom and coercion with rich, unsparing prose. The dual timelines intertwine like a dancer's arms -- graceful, tense and tragic. Flashout is a mystery, an exploration of identity and a dark, engrossing portrait of what happens when liberation becomes performance, and performance becomes a trap."--The Seattle Times

"A dark dive into the theater world." --The New York Times

Praise for Here in the Dark:

"Alexis Soloski's debut--a sharp, captivating thriller about a cynical theater critic who gets pulled into an investigation of a stranger's disappearance--is a suspenseful page-turner filled with complex characters.... Good luck not finishing it in one sitting." --Bustle

"Soloski smoothly transfers her masterful journalistic writing to this novel, creating a classic yet entirely modern noir. Fast-paced, funny, sexy, and witty, Here in the Dark is a satisfying read to the very last word."
--Chicago Review of Books

"Here in the Dark moves briskly as Soloski nicely incorporates character development in the plot that accelerates into the noir. Theatergoers especially will enjoy Vivian's references to classic and modern plays." --South Florida Sun Sentinel

"A tightly paced and expertly crafted noir whose heroine is both hilariously wisecracking and deeply troubled. From curtain up to curtain call, Here in the Dark is flawless." --Bookpage (starred review)

"How could I resist a suspense novel in which a critic becomes an amateur detective in order to avoid becoming a murder suspect or even a victim? I inhaled Alexis Soloski's debut thriller, Here in the Dark; but, even readers who don't feel a professional kinship with Soloski's main character should be drawn to this moody and erudite mystery. Soloski... [has] written a genuinely disturbing suspense tale that explores the theater of cruelty life can sometimes be." --Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air

"Twisty, foreboding, addictive, Here in the Dark is the perfect noir, a novel that blurs truth and fiction, and at the very end delivers a stinger that turns everything on its head. You'll think about it the next time you're sitting in the dark, waiting for the curtain to rise. Don't be surprised if there's something unsettling on the other side of it." --BookTrib

"Frightening, delicious, engrossing, and unforgettable." --Julia Kastner, Shelf Awareness

"Theater critic Alexis Soloski goes behind the curtain in this thriller about the blurry lines between art and reality.... Soloski combines her knowledge of the theater world with the twists and turns of the best psychological suspense." --Entertainment Weekly

"A moody, taut dose of noir, Here in the Dark is a poised, daring debut--the kind of novel I relish and can't get out of my head, evoking the work of icons like Megan Abbott and Margaret Millar in its hypnotic prose and mesmerizing characters. Readers will not forget Vivian Parry--and they won't want to." --Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity

"Soloski does not disappoint--in either her sharp-eyed and unflinching portrait of an unravelling critic, or in her delicious upending of genre. Hitchcock meets a slippery metatheatrics of power, performance, desire, and escape. This is a novel--and a protagonist--who moves with a precarious velocity, constantly choosing the most dangerous move and bringing us careening after." --Jen Silverman, author of We Play Ourselves

"From its very first page to its final revelation, Here in the Dark will possess you with a mix of acerbic wit and Highsmithian invention. I blazed through this book, delighting equally in the cleverness of its plot and the delicious wickedness of Vivian Parry--a woman you can't look away from even for a second. And why would you, when there's a life-or-death mystery, dialogue that feels beamed in from a classic noir, and a ballet about rabies on offer? Even if you've never seen a play, you'll be thrilled by the ways author Alexis Soloski takes the novel of suspense and turns it into a meditation on seeing and being seen, knowing and being known, judging and being judged." --Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to ACT

"Here in the Dark lives up to its title and is indeed a dark tale; it's also hilarious, addictive, elegantly constructed, and composed. It's ultimately a book about art and the love of art, but it's cleverly disguised as a thrill ride, a jolt of pulp and a shot of noir. It became a New York classic to me the minute I read the last sentence." --Michael Imperioli, actor, writer, and musician

About the Author